Posts tagged ‘letterforms’

So I had an amazing spring break… one of the things I had the opportunity to do was to go to Signal Return Letter Press in Downtown Detroit and make some postcards… Below are a few of the ones I played around with. I really got a thrill out of doing this all by hand, and it definitely makes you appreciate the craft a lot more since it’s very time-consuming and tedious. I loved making this post cards and I definitely am more interested in hand-setting type and printing things the old-fashioned way! Hopefully I’ll get to go back soon and make some more 🙂

Nice quote that stopped me in my tracks. Even though I’m a Graphic Designer, I love doing project by getting messy (screen printing, drawing, painting, etc). I don’t think value will ever be lost in handmade art.

Here’s a really cool post I found on the Design Observer site. It talks about this German Book from the 17th Century that basically is just a compilation of different calligraphy styles applied to the alphabet. What’s truly amazing is that each page gets more and more ornate. The time it took to make these is probably ridiculous, and I definitely don’t have a steady enough hand to do something like this so I definitely respect and admire it! Take a look.

I think it gets to a certain point where some of these are borderline-beyond-legible, but amazing to look at nonetheless!

I stumbled upon an article on Eye Magazine.com that talks about Monotype’s typographical adviser, Stanley Morison, who published an article about newspaper design (that I didn’t get to fully read yet).

The quote next to this picture states “This cover photograph, probably conceived by Beatrice Warde, is the likely cause of the misconception that there was a typeface called ‘Times Old Roman’ prior to October 1932. Before that year’s redesign The Times had used a version of Monotype Modern, which was adapted from a typeface created by the Edinburgh foundry Miller & Richards.”

I think it’s just a cool looking poster and comes up with the idea of an ‘Times Old Roman’, even thought it never existed, yet you can clearly see the difference between the two typefaces.

This truly is a genius design in my opinion. Combining images and the simple letterform of an ampersand to basically state the title of the film without using any photographic images is impressive. If you took away ‘Coffee and cigarettes’ at the bottom, after spending some time looking at it, one would be able to recognize that there is a coffee cup in the bowl of the ampersand and that the end of it resembles the butt of a cigarette. This design is very simplistic yet imaginative since you really have to look at the form to understand what is being presented to you. Also, the fact that the ampersand was most likely not altered to fit the images into it (such as it wasn’t skewed or twisted, etc) also adds to the fascination and beauty of this piece. Also the use of a beige-type of background reminds you of the effect a coffee stain would have on a white table, or how the cigarette paper burns as you smoke it. There’s a feeling of simplicity and sophistication in this piece since it makes you feel like all you need is some coffee and cigarettes (:

Another great example of hand-drawn lettering. Not only do I like this because it’s done manually, but it’s extremely expressive. It’s use of a calming, cool color and the vines sprouting out from all over the letter contrast the mechanical designs inside of the letter itself. The letter just seems to burst into life and breaks all the rules and barriers that a typical letter should have. I think this is great inspiration to how Typography can be extremely expressive, and you can essentially make it whatever you want it to be.

Here’s another cool poster I found breaking down letters, this one is by Jan Tschichold. Just like the Baskerville poster I found a while back, I think this one excellently represents how letters are formed from basic circles and lines. I’m not sure what typeface this is but I would assume it’s an old style serif because it’s very classical-looking, is obviously a serif, and there is not significant contrast in the thickness and thinness of the letterforms.

This is another really attractive modular type system I stumbled upon. Obviously the colors are what attracted me first – they are very harmonious and calming – the words aren’t jumping out at you! One thing I noticed is right at the top, the N and U essentially mirror each other, but the artist used different colors, which helps to differentiate between the two. I enjoy that not all parts of these letters are strictly the same (the stroke weight of the T is larger than the U right next to it). This variation makes the typeface very interesting and fun to look at. I also enjoy the use of square and circular shapes, not just one or the other. The texture within these letters are also very intriguing and captivating – resembles wood or marble.